Is gratitude a moral affect?

“McCullough et al. (2001) classify gratitude itself “moral,” but because feelings of gratitude ( a ) result from moral (e.g., prosocial, helping) behavior of the benefactor, and ( b) engender are often motivated to respond prosocially— bothtotheirbenefactorandtowardothersnot involved in the…”

“Although theorists have suggested that gratitude may have unique functions—particularly in the realm of reciprocal altruism and prosocial behavior (de Waal, 2000; Fredrickson, 2000; McCullough et al., 2001; Nesse, 1990; Trivers, 1971)—researchers have not investigated thoroughly whether gratitude motivates prosocial b…”

“…of right and wrong within specific moral domains, which feed into moral judgments, for example about whether or not to punish or how to allocate resources (Damasio, 1994; Greene & Haidt, 2002; Greene, Sommerville, Nystrom, Darley, & Cohen, 2001; Haidt, 2003, 2007; McCullough et al., 2001).”

“As an interpersonal emotion, gratitude is caused by receiving help that is appraised as costly to provide, valuable, and altruistically offered (rather than provided through ulterior motives) (Lane & Anderson, 1976; McCullough et al., 2001; Tesser, Gatewood, & Driver, 1968).”

“The ‘characteristic expression’ of gratitude (McCullough et al., 2001) seems to be that the recipient wants to return the favor to the benefactor, and effects of gratitude on repayment have been demonstrated in two recent behavioral studies (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; Tsang, 2006).”

“We reasoned that narcissistic individuals would be less likely to be grateful because research has shown that if people feel they are entitled to benefits, they are less likely to feel grateful (for reviews see McCullough et al., 2001; Watkins, 2001).”

“The expression of gratitude is also said to stimulate moral behavior, such as helping, and to help build social bonds (McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ).”

“There is growing attention to other distinct positive states with emotional qualities, including hope (Snyder et al., 1996), gratitude ( McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ), elevation (Haidt, 2003), and interest (Fredrickson, 1998).”

“Feeling gratitude is a typical affective response when a person receives “benevolence” from another, which then motivates the recipient to reward the giver and increases compliance with any subsequent requests (Goei and Boster 2005; McCullough et al. 2001).”

“Gratitude expressions appear to serve as moral reinforcers in enhancing helpers’ prosocial behavior (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“McCullough and colleagues (McCullough et al. 2001 ) reviewed the classical moral writings on gratitude and synthesized them with contemporary empirical”

“…gratitude might be related to relationship formation, it was thought to do so by establishing, through repeated interactions, that the grateful person was trustworthy (i.e., because he or she had repaid a provided benefit; see theorizing in Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; McCullough et al., 2001, 2008).”

“This finding lends support to the hypothesis that gratitude serves as a moral motivator ( McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ).”

“For example, compassion is thought to be critical to care and filial attachment (Mikulincer, Shaver, Gillath, & Nitzberg, 2005), love is a determinant and protector of the long-term commitment of reproductive relations (Gonzaga, Keltner, Londahl, & Smith, 2001), gratitude is a driver of cooperative alliances among non…”

“In addition, McCullough et al. (2001) posited that the emotion of gratitude has a specific action tendency, which is " to contribute to the welfare of the benefactor (or a third party) in the future " (p. 252).”

“McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson (2001) theorized that gratitude is a moral affect—that is, one with moral precursors and consequences.”

“McCullough et al. (2001) showed that grateful individuals were especially appreciative of the contribution of others to their happiness.”

“Because gratitude is predicated upon receiving a benefit from another social agent, McCullough et al. (2001) proposed that gratitude possesses three psychological features that are relevant to processing and responding to prosocial behavior: It is a (a) benefit detector and both a (b) reinforcer…”

“The small amount of research in this area provides indirect support for this hypothesis (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“Gratitude has been shown to correlate moderately with the Big Five personality traits (McCullough et al., 2001), which appear to represent personality at the highest level of abstraction (Costa & McCrae, 1995; Goldberg, 1993; McCrae & Costa, 1999).”

“This ability may be the strongest developmental catalyst of gratitude, as it enables the social-cognitive determinants needed to appreciate and reciprocate the conditions of benefit-giving situations (McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ).”

“The moral motivator account suggests gratitude is important for all three forms of reciprocity (direct, downstream and upstream; McCullough et al., 2001).”

“The moral-emotion gratitude— a positive emotion in response to the perception of a good deed that was directed toward oneself (McCullough, Emmons, Kilpatrick, & Larson, 2001)— can affirm group identities.”

“Expressing gratitude motivates kindness and other moral behaviors and, thus, is theorized to be an important process in creating positive social outcomes ( McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ).”

“As a state, gratitude seems to have a ‘moral’ or pro–social nature (Bartlett & DeSteno, 2006; McCullough et al., 2001; Tsang, 2006), involving recognition of benefits received (Tesser, Gatewood, & Driver, 1968).”

“Although psychology has largely neglected the study of gratitude (Emmons & Crumpler, 2000; McCullough et al., 2001), gratitude may be an important component of happiness (McCullough et al., 2001; Watkins, 2004; Watkins et al., 2003).”

“Additionally, the emotion of gratitude acts as a moral barometer, drawing attention to the aid that people receive in everyday life ( McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ).”

“As McCullough et al. (2001) suggested, gratitude has three specific moral functions in that it serves as a moral barometer, a moral motive for beneficiaries, and a moral reinforcement for benefactors.”

“Gratitude refers to the pleasant, mindful awareness of being the recipient of personal benefits that are acknowledged to be the result of someone else’s actions (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“The narrow definition is captured by Roberts’s (2004) conceptualization of gratitude as having three major aspects: the benefit, the beneficiary, and the benefactor.”

“Given this diverse history, it is perhaps not surprising to find that scholars have likewise conceptualized gratitude in many different ways (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“We expected that the AIR subscales would be positively correlated with a measure of dispositional gratitude (McCullough et al., 2002) and a measure of gratitude for a partner’s kind thoughts and deeds (adapted from Algoe et al., 2010).”

“For example, during a classroom break giving students the option to either socialize or help their teacher could behaviorally measure gratitude’s function as a moral motive (i.e., igniting prosocial behavior; McCullough et al. 2001).”

“We selected the eight emotions for our two studies based upon the middle-level categories that emerged from a pilot lexical analysis of positive emotion word free-sorts (Campos, Gonzaga, Shin, & Keltner, 2002) and published theoretical analyses and empirical data on positive emotion constructs, preferably from multipl…”

“This ability may be the strongest developmental catalyst of gratitude, as it enables the social-cognitive determinants needed to appreciate and reciprocate the conditions of benefit-giving situations (McCullough et al. 2001).”

“prosocial behavior and enhances interpersonal relationships and personal well-being (McCullough et al. 2001).”

“This ability may be the strongest developmental catalyst of gratitude, as it enables the antecedent social-cognitive appraisals needed to appreciate and reciprocate the conditions of benefit-giving situations (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“Gratitude emerges from two information-processing stages: (1) recognizing positive personal experiences, and (2) attributing these positive experiences to an external source(1) (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“reviewed by McCullough et al. (2001). The analyses were repeated after the measure of gratitude”

“Researchers have tended to offer theories of individual positive emotions without explicitly addressing how different positive emotions might be related (e.g., McCullough et al., 2001; Ruch, 1993; Shiota et al., 2007; Tracy & Robins, 2007; for an exception, see Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2008).”

“” 2See Ottemann and Luthans (1975), Luthans et.”

“…styles linked with gratitude might be based on the recognition of benefi ts, stronger social bonds, prosocial motivation, and the evolutionary adaptation of gratitude as an emotion for regulating reciprocal altruism (McCullough et al., 2001 ; McCullough, Kimeldorf, & Cohen, 2008 ; Trivers, 1971 ).”

“Gratitude supports systems of reciprocity (McCullough et al., 2001; Trivers, 1985).”

“In fact, it has been argued to play such an important role that it has been billed as ‘‘the moral memory of mankind’’ (Simmel, 1908/1996) and a ‘‘moral barometer’’ signalling a kindness and then motivating the grateful individual to reciprocate the prosocial behaviour (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“In accordance with predictions derived from moral affect theory (McCullough et al., 2001) and attachment theory (Bowlby, 1982), adolescents with high levels of gratitude are more likely to perceive other people as supportive and available, and feel being loved and cared for by others, thus promoting their selfesteem.”

“Feelings of gratitude are likely when the recipients perceive that the money makes a real difference – in material or symbolic terms – and that the transfer reflects an intentional, non-obligatory effort by senders to increase the recipients’ well-being (cf. McCullough et al., 2001).”

“F or p er so na l u se o nl y. PS65CH16-Keltner ARI 31 October 2013 14:13 been considered a moral emotion and a primary determinant of prosocial behavior (McCullough et al. 2001), as it reinforces the self and rewards prosocial action (Bself ).”

“While gratitude is clearly linked to religious life, gratitude has also been defined and conceptualized as a non-spiritual ‘affective trait’ (McCullough et al, 2002 ) or ‘moral affect’ (McCullough, Kirkpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001 ).”

“Cicero labeled gratitude as the ‘parent of all virtues’, and researchers have highlighted how this prosocial action occurs often in response to another person’s virtue or generosity (Emmons & McCullough, 2003; McCullough et al., 2001).”

“Researchers have posited that gratitude acts as a moral barometer, thus making people aware of the moral acts around them, as well as those done on their behalf (McCullough et al., 2001).”

“In turn, the beneficiary (i.e., the customer) reciprocates through actions that contribute to the future well-being of the benefactor (i.e., the employee) (McCullough et al. 2001).”

“Other researchers have suggested that kind acts inspired by gratitude build and strengthen social bonds and friendships (Emmons & Shelton, 2002; McCullough & Tsang, 2004; McCullough et al., 2001).”

“…Clark, Durtschi, Fincham, & Graham, in press), lower materialism (Lambert, Fincham, Stillman, & Dean, 2009), lower depression (Wood, Maltby, Gillett, Linley, & Joseph, 2008), and strengthened social bonds and friendships (Emmons & Shelton, 2002; McCullough et al., 2001; McCullough & Tsang, 2004).”

“In line with McCullough et al. (2001), we can thus consider gratitude as a moral emotion which comprises three moral functions.”

“More generally, the behavior following guilt is mostly interpreted as moral behavior, or behavior motivated out of concern for another person (McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, & Larson, 2001; Sheikh & Janoff-Bulman, 2010).”

“Focusing on the positive benefits that are received can thus motivate prosocial behaviours, increase positive relations and social support (McCullough et al. 2001).”